March 8, 2021
Let’s look at a lovely grey sweater!
please note that this style is loosely cut, and oversized; if you’re looking for something more traditional, try this one! or maybe one of FIFTEEN colors of the crew-neck sweater…
Sweater – J.Crew
As before, we will take a look at how this sweater works in an outfit that includes another neutral color:
Sweater – J.Crew
The first thing that I did when I started this post was to copy over the outfits from the camel sweater adventure, remove the camel sweater and plug in the grey one. Just as a starting point, you understand?
What I found was that I had to only make minor changes in the accessories for some outfits to get a better “feel”; in the case of 2 outfits I didn’t have to change a thing!
For this first outfit, I got our heroine some silver earrings and grey loafers to give the whole “grey” aspect of her wardrobe some feeling of deliberateness. Then I picked a fun scarf, and ridiculous socks, to tie it all together….
Earrings – Scream Pretty; sweater – J.Crew; white shirt – Lands’ End; scarf – Echo; socks – Me Moi; loafers – Massimo Matteo; jeans – L.L.Bean
Here I again swapped gold for silver jewelry, picked a different (madly expensive) scarf, and it all comes together! I’m so happy to get another chance to look at those pumps…
Earrings – Saachi; sweater – J.Crew; blanket scarf – Etro; bracelet – The Alkemistry; skirt – 8 by Yoox; pumps – Boden
Nothing to change here! I stuck with gold in her earrings and bag because of the pronounced gold in her scarf…
Earrings – Sylvia Toledano; sweater – J.Crew; Dancing Butterflies scarf – Echo; bag – Goodnight Macaroon; black velvet loafers – Naturalizer; pants – H&M
This next outfit, I kept simple… No magic scarf this time! But a calm, elegant outfit that’s “nice” without being fussy…
Jade necklace – Zandra Lorena Sajbin; sweater – J.Crew; white tee – L.L.Bean; socks – Falke; loafers – Dr. Scholl’s; cotton twill pants – L.L.Bean
Here’s another outfit that looks just fine with no changes…The scarf really makes a difference, but a grey pearl necklace with gold hardware, or jewelry that includes silver and gold, would have the same effect…
Earrings – Robert Lee Morris; sweater – J.Crew; tee – J.Crew; scarf – Fetolia; imlay gray jeans – Lands’ End; boots – Dingo
Silver, and a scarf with just a touch of grey, were the only changes here. And yes, I recommend the glittery shoes; I have them in black and quite adore them!
Earrings – Marie June Jewelry; sweater – J.Crew; tee shirt – L.L.Bean; scarf – Jessie Zhao New York; glitter sneakers – Keds
She swaps out earrings and scarf, and she’s good to go! Really, I’m just a little bit surprised at how well these outfits worked with a change of sweater color!
Earrings – Komang Wijayana; sweater – J.Crew; scarf – The Met Store; bag – Boden; pumps – SAS; skirt – J.Crew
I treated myself to this sweater in Heather Blue;, and I can assure you that it’s roomy! This is a great thing, if you’ve ever wanted to layer a sweater over a dress and were concerned that the bottom hem of the sweater was going to squeeze in the skirt of your dress!
Earrings – Neetu Barathi; sweater – J.Crew; denim dress – H&M; butterfly bracelet – Adriana de Gadea; ballet flats – Gentle Souls; tote – Lolas Bag
One could be tempted to tie this next week scarf around a ponytail, or to use it hold back “Quarantine Hair”…
Carnelian earrings – QVC; tee shirt – L.L.Bean; Floral Grid tie – Echo; sweater – J.Crew; loafers – Clarks; jeans – J Brand
When you know it’s going to warm up later, but right NOW you need a snuggle, and you’re not good with cardigans:
Earrings – Neetu Barathi; sweater – J.Crew; dress – H&M; Intricate Paisley scarf – Echo; ballet flats – Sam Edelman
This next skirt can be rolled or unrolled to adjust length; with something like this that might create a bit of fabric accumulation around your torso, a roomy sweater is the perfect choice!
Green quartz earrings – Aurea Sandrea; sweater – J.Crew; scarf – ImageDiary; jade bracelet – Zandra Lorena Sajbin; skirt – Loveappella; ballet flats – Lucky Brand
This outfit is kind of a mirror image of the outfit with the camel sweater, grey tee and pants! The scarf remains, because I’m smitten with it and want you all to enjoy how well it works here…
Earrings – Samuel B.; sweater – J.Crew; tee – Samsoe & Samsoe; scarf – Fetolia; sweatpants – Rails; sneakers – Vans
This sweater might be tied around this heroine’s waist for much of the day, but as the cool breezes start to come in off of the water, she will be ready…
Earrings – Uno De 50; sweater – J.Crew; dress – H&M; necklace – Chan Luu; sandals – UGG
Something I’m not really looking at (yet!) is the way that these neutral outfits are a perfect base for a pretty accent color…
earrings – Michael Krainer; sweater – J.Crew; scarf – Talbots; socks – Falke; loafers – Bandolino; pants – L.L.Bean
I wear my black v-neck sweater almost every week, over shirts, tee shirts, dresses, turtlenecks… If I had to start from scratch, it would be among the first things that I would buy!
love,
Janice
p.s. Eight years ago, we added accessories to a simple beige, peach and white summer wardrobe. It looks very appealing today!
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I really Ike how the change to grey shoes made the outfits so much more intentional. My question is if my wardrobe is mainly cool neutrals – black, light grey and navy, then how to choose which color shoes to invest in? I prefer different type of shoes for each season/outfit (pants vs skirts). It seems a bit silly for me to have for example black, grey and navy loafers but this post just makes me want to branch out of black shoes.
And bravo on showing how little changes makes outfits so much more cohesive.
This is a great question. My 2 cents is that grey shoes/boots would work well with all 3 of your neutrals, so in my opinion, they are more versatile than black. (I know that it’s perfectly OK to wear black shoes with navy, but I personally don’t love the look for myself…when the navy is dark, I feel that I look like I got dressed in the dark and put on the “wrong” shoes.) I would also consider texture and pattern (e.g., leopard print, snakeskin, suede or calf hair) to add visual interest. But I like wearing a noticeable/interesting shoe. I think I’d rather wear the same pair of boring pants for 5 days in a row and change the shoes rather than the reverse. I’m interested in how other people approach this question.
Isn’t it amazing how well grey works with so many neutrals? It really does go well with navy and black, but black and navy give me pause. Grey shoes are a bit hard to find (Great work, Janice!) but I find they’re worth it. As for accent colors, I’m in love with grey and: coral, red, teal, aqua,pink, purple, green….
Janice,
The beige, peach and white retrospective is the bomb ! Add some aqua and that’s my Summer wardrobe !
That sweater does not read grey to me but more oatmeal. I think that’s why it works so well with the warmer tones and (for me) doesn’t work as well with the navy. I love grey, but that sweater has a beigey tone that would wipe out every bit of colour in my face!
That being said, I love the way this exercise shows how versatile one item can be! It makes an investment piece make sense when you can use the item in so many colour combinations.
Always love your posts! Keep up the amazing work!
I love that Fetolia scarf so much that I have bought it in the beige and grey colour (shown in your post) and the other colourway. There is only one left, I think. I will be posting a reveal on my own blog when they arrive. Thanks to your inspiring post, I now have the perfect outfit to showcase the scarf!
What is your blog? I’d like to see what you put together.
Amanda, if you click on Anne’s screen name, you can get to her blog. It took me a long time to realize that when a screen name appears in the comments here in ALL CAPS, it has a link to a website!
Anne, the comment nesting is weird for me today, but I wanted to say: Accessories and Books?! This is right up my alley! Looking forward to reading your blog.
I’ll join your club, Anne, as a recently semi- retired Librarian with chronic pain. I like scarves but my passion is costume jewellery and sparkly accessories.
People are beginning to ask me what my plans are beyond reading the Vivienne Fies and sorting out my wardrobe…. Why do retired people have to have plans these days? The reason I semi-retired was so that I can take each day it comes without a plan, a schedule or even a routine.
Today is the first day of lifting the lockdown in England. We can now have a picnic in a park with another person, so that’s what I did today with my daughter. It was quite chilly but we sat on a bench wrapped in blankets. Simple pleasures – that’s what I want to fulfill from now on.
Retired librarian here too. I’m wondering how many of us there are who are fans of the Vivienne Files. :)
Blog coming soon!
As someone else mentioned, these sweater posts have shown how very versatile a good neutral can be. That being said, not even on my best day could I wear any of the above combinations! Sometimes I do envy people that can put together and wear the neutrals on a consistent basis. However, then I doubt I would hear the custodian tell me he always looks forward to seeing me because I’m a “fun dresser”. I do have so much fun with all my color. And I so appreciate all I have learned here at TVF as well as from the commentators! Have a good day everyone!
The last outfit, Janice put together could be my neutral ‘uniform’. I would wear an accent or patterned top or shirt under the jumper just for variation. Today, I am wearing a grey cowl neck jumper over a lilac polo-neck with navy cord trousers.
It’s a pretty minimalist wardrobe when you realize that you only changed some jewelry scarves and shoes. For those that need/want color two brighter sweaters could be chosen. Neutrals can be colorful if you want. INMO Really a good exercise as always. Thank you Janice.
Hi,
The link to the butterfly earrings is broke: Earrings – Neetu Barathi. Thank you!
The link to the jade necklace by Zandra Lorena Sajbin is also broken.
All of the links to Novica are broken, because they’ve changed the company with whom they do commissions. I’ve got a LOT of broken links now…
sigh…
Janice
Okay, I’m starting to get them fixed. Given that I have about a thousand links to Novica on The Vivienne Files, it will take about a decade…
hugs,
Janice
How utterly frustrating this must be for you. Companies never consider the customer when they make decisions like this. Perhaps there might be a programmer amongst your readers (and families) who could create a way for you to update your links in one go? Hope you get it sorted soon.
This post is a compelling set of examples showing how brilliantly a scarf can tie an outfit together. I’d make the same argument for necklaces (where we can show our individual styles!) Does anyone else find themselves referring back to these posts time and again for inspiration? I keep telling every friend who whines about their wardrobe to come here to sort out the chaos!
Don’t know if you will see this ak, but I do look back I do reference older posts and I do tell all friends about TVF if they need assistance!
Like Sheila, I also wear color most of the time but am also enjoying these posts on neutrals. I like the looks of all-neutral outfits, which can come across as very sophisticated (see: outfit #3 with the black pants and butterfly scarf, mwah), but I rarely wear them and am often dissatisfied when I do. I am not a person with any kind of “sophisticated” style, and the lack of color either washes me out OR makes my normal pink-y face/yellow-y hair stand out so much that I appear to have gone to a clown beautician and asked for an understated look. For most of these outfits, they are lovely but I would need to add some color to wear them happily. Luckily adding color to neutrals is very easy. Adding prints with color, as shown in the first and last outfits, is a no-brainer for those of us who wear scarves all the time. But I also think a pop of color would be great for some of them also…I’m thinking outfit #4 with the olive pants would benefit from a solid accent scarf and earrings; outfit #7 with navy would look terrific with something like magenta, emerald green, or coral; outfit #8 with the denim dress with a red tote bag; outfit #9 with the white dress subbed out for a solid accent color dress. Another option would be to convert the pullover sweater into a cardigan and add a colorful top as a pop of color.
The grey and rust combination is amazing, and not one you see very often. I like to add a dusky pink or a dark green to that combination, but in outfit #9 with the bright rust pants, that rust reads as a color to me already.
My initial thought about that brown/black/grey butterfly scarf in outfit #3 was: Man, this really shows the value of a many-neutral print scarf that can bridge many variations of a mixed-neutral outfit, and this is an area (3+ neutral, all-neutral scarves) where my own wardrobe is lacking. But that makes sense, really, since I don’t actually WEAR those kinds of outfits! Even when I imagine myself in a variant of one of these outfits where the many-neutral scarf would work well…say, grey cardigan, black pants, accent color top…I would probably pick out a grey/black/accent color print scarf instead of a multi-neutral one. So perhaps that’s a wardrobe “hole” that just doesn’t need to be filled!
The Jessie Zhao blue leopard scarf is so great…I am glad that the scarf actually has a significant yellow border that I don’t like very much because that saved me from temptation.
The look back was a lot of fun. The Paul Smith tote bag with the swirly print was a show-stopper. I didn’t realize that was a thing, but a quick “Paul Smith swirl” search makes clear that there are a LOT of options out there. I might have to keep my eyes open for that rabbit swirl clutch bag :) And I now realize that a swirly print silk scarf I bought from a thrift store is clearly a Paul Smith swirl knock-off.
Almost forgot: the link to the jade necklace is broken.
Barb, sorry I couldn’t reply directly…I agree that the sweater is not a simple grey. On my screen, it is about 70% of the way from grey to taupe!
Gray isn’t a color I can wear. Camel, however, works well for me. I had forgotten about my camel sweater until Janice’s reminder. Since then, I’ve worn it twice. The first was with denim jeans and a blouse with a fun city of London print. Yesterday, I chose olive pants with my favorite Liberty print blouse. As for shoes/boots to wear with navy, I wear cognac. Black is too harsh for me so I have no black. Many find this unacceptable, but I remind them that we all have to find what works for us.
The world is full of men who wear cordovan or brown shoes with navy suits – I think you’re right on track!
hugs,
Janice
I love cognac and also burgundy shoes with navy. Navy shoes with navy clothes look like a uniform to me, and I’ve worn a lot of those in my day (and still wear navy + navy shoes in some volunteer work I do). – nancyo
Well, I’ve taken the two grey and navy vignettes, added a few extra items in floral and pink accents from my wardrobe to create a six pack 4×4 plus the accessories, shoes and bags. A packing list to go away sometime this year…. hopefully ☺
Meant to say that I took the two grey and navy plus the two grey and denim to create the basis of a Six-pack and a 4×4…. If the rust was swapped to burgundy, I would add those to the mix for an autumn/winter break.
In the grey sweater with white pants option (my favorite, so elegant in the summer), there are two links to the sweater but none to the pants. I’ll just say that I fell in love with grey with white after time spent in Copenhagen, where a very nice B&B owner wore this combination a lot. Loved it and was compelled to adopt it into my life.
I found the pants link in the post with the camel sweater.
This was really impressive! It’s amazing how you can change a complete look with just a couple of accessories.
The sweater was only left in pink, blue and yellow when I got there.
This was fascinating! I love seeing the multitude of different looks you created, Janice, with one sweater! Your posts continue to be my favorites and I look forward to them daily!
Thank you!
P.S. I also appreciated the discussion on what shoes/bags to wear with navy…always a conundrum for me! :}
i like everything except i don’t understand those huge scarves that look you are wrapping your faucets for winter freeze. I guess others must like them, but unless it is the dead of winter, i just don’t get it…
Sheri makes a good point about the bags and shoes that you could wear with navy. Grey and navy are the main neutrals in my wardrobe. My everyday handbag is a slightly metallic pewter grey. I have a smart navy leather bag and a woven navy bag and a grey snakeprint for the summer. Plus grey and dark blue-grey tote/shopping bags. As for shoes, navy shoes are relatively easy to find but navy ankle boots are trickier. Being small, I would wear navy shoes with navy skirt or trousers to continue the unbroken line but I wear mostly black ankle boots with navy. If I was wearing grey bottoms, then grey shoes or ankle boots do look better. In the summer, I do wear white and coloured shoes and bags just to add a pop of colour.
I also wear black boots w/navy – because I don’t wear navy that often I’ve not wanted to invest in navy boots. Or I wear colored sneakers… red, purple, or yellow, depending on what else I have on.
I wear my purple DM-style boots with purple trousers and my burgundy boots with burgundy trousers. I’d love to find a pair of teal boots or shoes to fit my very wide feet….
Hola everyone!
Really enjoy these exercises Janice! And the look back was amazing! Timeless, easy to wear and beautiful ❤️
I have 2 comments:
1. Regarding shoes to wear with navy, I like black and cognac for autumn /winter and taupe or skin-toned sandals or flats for spring /summer. I also like navy flats and sneakers, but for boots or ankle boots prefer something to wear with other colors.
2. Janice, can you add the Uniqlo Spanish site to your links?
Thanks yall for your company while I drink the last of my morning coffee!
Gotta say, I miss your WTW posts!
Somehow, it always put the right clothes in front of us at the right time.
It helped me organize my closet for each season as it came along.
Cheers!
So well done! My kind of post! Janice – since you are humble about marketing things, I want the group to know about your color planners under “Support the Vivienne Files”. For a few pennies, you can download great document that suggest pairing colors. Super helpful when you’re stuck.
Hi Janice and Everyone: I like -all- of the color combinations ☺ because they are low maintenance and attractive simultaneously.
Oh, the forthcoming days when I can get to wear shoes again -! I have a variety of comfy ones but in the winter I alternate between my pairs of black and grey boots.
One can never have too many pairs of ridiculous socks. Life is too short.
I’m one of those women that must have Navy shoes to wear with my Navy and Black shoes to wear with my Black Bottoms. I am also this way with Handbags! I only own a pair a navy leather flats with a snakeskin accent. I found a suede pair of Navy booties last year but I have a narrow foot and even with thick socks they were just too wide. Unfortunately! I will keep looking! I do think my shoes stand out more because I only wear skirts but anytime in Fall/Winter I wear matching hose! I have navy leather sandles also with a snakeskin accent for wearing in the Spring/Summer. I liked the Camel sweater much more but I have a warm complection! I’m a neutrals wearer for sure! I can’t understand all the talk about wearing so much color. Neutrals are so much more elegant!
Wait! You got a BLUE sweater?! Taking a walk on the wild side for sure!! ?
Also, would it be possible for you to add Universal Standard to your list of links? Interesting, high-quality, and size-inclusive styles. Thank you!
I would love to add a link to them, but I don’t (yet) have a business relationship with them. Not ever retailer works with bloggers or other “influencers”.
I don’t feel like an influencer. What a weird word….
hugs,
Janice
Has there ever been / will there ever be an episode of “I love it but will I wear it?” when the heroine decides NOT to get the item in question?
OOOh…. that’s intriguing. It’s sort of counter-intuitive for me to show something and tell you NOT to buy it, but it’s an interesting thought…
thanks for asking!
hugs,
Janice
The gray cashmere sweater post saved my day yesterday. It was St Patricks day, green is NOT my color so I have few green options in my closet. I do have olive pants about the color of the green skirt. I consider them a neutral, but not near my face. Quick! I paired them with a trusty gray sweater and a scarf with gray, olive and cream. It’s a combination that I would not have thought of on my own. Shopped my closet and felt great wearing the combination. Thanks for your versatile posts!